DLC interiors? I would not buy.
I would buy a DLC for a ten hour solo narrative campaign that fleshed out the universe lore in game with FMV cut scenes.
Good! -A long standing wishlist item, and a standalone item to boot; One that could conceivably be built by a separate team.
From the existence of the tutorials, It is evident that FDev has facilites in place to spin off a specialised solo- (...and maybe group, too?) -instance, and to script events and callbacks; What we do not know, is how finicky those are to work with, nor just how difficult it is for the director to avoid sequence-breaking states in a game with as much player freedom as Elite.
How much reduction of complexity and involvement do you think they could get away with, though, balanced against potential audience size? -Sooner or later their tools are bound to limit what they can do, and cutscenes (FMV or non-interrupting in-game events) are expensive to produce, especially if they involve voice acting and/or performance capture...
Oh yes that's always going to be an issue, but what I could see is more planets as landables and better bios and environments as a DLC, with the old version of Horizons rolled into Odyssey, that way the Horizons players get an upgrade to the Odyssey landable content and legs, the keen players get a new DLC with new planets and bio but the player base isn't further fractured. So the point here is to not fracture the player base further. Rather than an interiors DLC fracturing the player base into 3, "Horizons", "Odyssey", "Odyssey with Interiors," keep the 2 we have now, Odyssey (with all the old Horizons payers) and "Odyssey with Interiors." That's how they did it with Odyssey, rolled the old original base game into Horizons, so we only had Horizons and Odyssey rather than the Original base game, Horizons and Odyssey.
How about such a fold-in of Odyssey, with the replacing "current active expansion" being the addition of EVA and entering all kinds of structures in space for numerous new gameplay mode/scenario reasons, with regular walking, 0g, and magnetic attachment all present and seamlessly intertransitioning? ...because something like that is what I for one have in mind with interiors, with moving around inside one's own ship as a prerequisite/side-benefit part of that. (Maybe more in-depth NPC interaction, whilst they're at it -- both procedural and scripted)...
With current practices, I fear this would probably, and unfortunately, involve a whole new set of locations, separate from existing ones, just like with Odyssey settlements and points of interest, again in order to separate the haves and the haves not...
Keep the thoughts coming, anybody who has them, because I for one am genuinely curious whether after these decades of online gaming, somebody could still come up with a new monetisation model, or new modification of existing model, which would let FDev make a neat profit, whilst giving customers at large a feeling they get a fair deal, without splitting the playerbase. (Obviously, with a subscription model everybody would usually be on the same build (there are always exceptions, of course), but on the other hand, it is my belief that one major selling point of ED, is that there are no regularly recurring expenses.)
On a more intemediary note; What sort of non-paid value-add updates to Odyssey do people feel could get the greater part (...not just: "me and my immediate friends") of those players who gave it a pass, and maybe left the game altogether, to reconsider their decision? (The "ship interior" crowd has already made their thoughts on the matter quite clear, I think. :7)
oh dear lord. that is one way to totally torpedoing your credibility
. (just pulling your leg)
it does trigger me a bit however how valve can do no wrong .. despite them being the company who really push the whole forcibly installing 3rd party bloat to play a game combined with selling games as a service not as a product.
it all started with half life 2. At least back in the day valve made games rather than just taking 30% off everyone who does make games.
I keep wondering how Yannis Varoufakis may feel about having been part of setting the modern videogame monetisation snowball rolling...
?
